Beyond the Bestsellers, Authors A-H
Vacation time! Sometimes people ask for books set in certain locales--here are some "Beyond"
books broken out by setting. You won't know until you get there whether your time will be
halcyon, as in Howard Frank Mosher's Vermont, or harrowing, as in Anita Shreve's Maine. But
that's the way life is. So take a chance, and check out your own state, or visit one of the others. We'll settle for just doing North America here.
Alabama:
- Julia Oliver--family secrets and a landmark mill
Alaska:
- Sue Henry--death and dognapping at the State Fair
Arizona:
- James C. Mitchell--border transgressions and baseball gangsters
Arkansas:
- Donald Harington--sweet ham and a sour election
- Myra McLarey--a 1919 baseball game with resonance
California:
- Robert Eversz--tabloid shooting and just plain shooting
- Jo-Ann Mapson--battles of the sexes and a Frank Lloyd
Wright house
- Keith Snyder--another walk on the weird side
- Edward Wright--1950s LA noir with a former B-western star turned detective
Colorado:
- John Dunning--murder, and the rare book trade
- Kent Haruf--kindness of near-strangers, and a side of beef
Connecticut:
- Stewart O'Nan--a Red Lobster goes under.
Florida:
- Larry Baker--pyrotechnics at a Drive-In
- John
Henry Fleming--the start of the Post Office and the tourist trade
- Carl Hiaasen--offbeat heroes, wierded-out villains, and Skink
- Jonathon King--Everglades loner PI with urban and local ties
- Dennis McFarland--making sense
of senior years
- James Swain--Rolling Stones fueled psychokiller
Georgia:
- Robert Inman--football, the ministry and a Harley
Illinois:
- A. Manette Ansay--Magical Realism and then some in the
Midwest
Indiana:
- Tristan Egolf--chicken factories, garbage strikes and
trolls
Iowa:
- Robert Boswell--the concept of the "Home" state
- Tom Drury--big casts, and one wild, weird weekend
- Ed Gorman--the
Dean of Hawkeye mystery writers
- Robert Schultz--a painter of nudes, a burner of trees
- Robert James Waller--I know, I know, I know....
Kansas:
- Judy Troy--love and much else in Venus
Kentucky:
- Tristan Egolf--it's that pig wrestling thing again
- Philip Lee Williams--suspense fiction in the caves
- Lana Witt--hilarious thoughtful ecological fable with great characters
Louisiana:
- John Gregory Brown--collapsing bridges, blues funerals and New Orleans
- John Dufresne--Shiver-de-Freeze, the Fontanas, and world-class philosophical
jokes
- David
Lozell Martin--"love, redemption, and felony theft"
James Wilcox--Baptists,
Bibles and Bassoons in Tula Springs
Maine:
- Cathie Pelletier--life with the Giffords in Mattagash, Allagash, Fort Kent(LI
TYPE=disc>Anita Shreve--turbulent passions along the coast or on the Isles
- Cynthia Thayer--growing up Passamaquoddy
Massachusetts:
- Elizabeth
McCracken--of Giants and Librarians
Michigan:
- Steve Amick--politics, love, lust, trees and warpaint in a resort town
- Michael Collins--death by a dead man in the Upper
Peninsula
- Loren Estleman--inside Detroit, suave and/or gritty
- Steve Hamilton--it's way tough up there in the yoop--the UP
- Joseph Heywood--crime and conservation in the UP
- Thomas
Mallon--introducing Owosso, as it really was
- Bill Morris--Buick drives to outsell
Plymouth
- John Smolens--a deadly trip to an old lodge in the UP
- A. J. Verdelle--coming of age in Detroit, after Virginia
- Nancy
Willard--check out the indoor trout stream
Minnesota:
- Jon Hassler--Russo's Straight Man on the
Prairie
- Pete Hautman--funny, far-out and right on all at once
- Lorna Landvik--demented dentists, evil English profs, and a cultural-center-beauty-parlor
Montana:
- Jamie Harrison--the ongoing, we hope, saga of Blue Deer
- Thomas King--of anglos and Indians way up by the border
- Dierdre
McNamer--coming of age, on one hand, championship boxing on the other
Nebraska:
- Tom McNeal--eight-man football, honkey-tonks and small-town grudges
- Ben Sherwood--airplane-eating on the Prairie
Nevada:
- Joe Gores--King of the Skip-tracers
New Hampshire:
- John Colapinto--escape to NH with forged authorial
identity? Not likely
- Ruth MacDougall--what happens when the Cheerleader gets older
- John Burnham Schwartz--from backroads hit-and-run to a snowy resort
showdown
New Mexico:
- Rudolfo Anaya--of the Chicano, Hispanic and Native American
backgounds of Albuquerque
- Michael McGarrity--from Tony Hillerman country
New York:
- Lauren Belfer--back when Buffalo really was the City of Light
- Ethan Black--old money, big houses, psychological insight and gore
- Jesse Browner--time frozen on a neglected island in the NY Harbor
- Stephen
Dobyns--from the Saratoga Raceway to a reliving of Steve's eventful tenure at SU
- John Farrow--of bootleg runs across the frozen St. Lawrence and more
- Ad Hudler--of househusbands and hospital administrators in Rochester
- Matthew Jones--deerjacking and artiste-poseurs in the Adirondacks
- J.
Robert Lennon--comics and mail delivery in Ithaca
- Robert Littell--weird academic
goings-on around Hornell
- Anna Murdoch--goombas, Mustangs and Uncle Percy's
backyard ark
- Ray Peterson--bovine discourse around Watertown
- Barbara Rogan--ghost-story writer, haunted house, Long Island
- Sandi
Toksvig--coming-of-age and saving the zoo around Albany
North Carolina:
- Martin Clark--Goddesses and Mobile Home Living in
the Tarheel State
- Laurence Naumoff--talking catfish??? All that and more in
Silk Hope
Ohio:
- Mike Magnusson--the dark side of Columbus
- David Mizner--porn and school board elections.
Oklahoma:
- Billie Letts--ah, the Wonders of Wal-Mart
Pennsylvania:
- Kathleen Cambor--Paracelsan flames in Philly;
- George Constable--Philly
again, featuring Raymond the dog;
- Stewart O'Nan--death in a small town
South Dakota:
- Susan Power--ghosts, dual timelines and a dog named
Chuck Norris;
- Ron Robinson--a vision quest to remember
Tennessee:
- Sharyn McCrumb--visions, legends from the past and
present
Texas:
- Ben
Rehder--of tycoons, goombas, game wardens, rednecks and long necks;
- Mary
Willis Walker--suspense and a buried schoolbus
Vermont:
- Howard Frank Mosher--local color, bears in cabins, and a
crazy circus
Virginia:
- William Hazelgrove--a To Kill a Mockingbirdfor
our times
Washington:
- Sherman Alexie--Indian problems, lots of problems,
Seattle's underside
Washington, D. C.:
- Larry Beinhart--the fancy side, but evil
- George Pelecanos--not the fancy side, the other side
West Virginia:
- Keith Maillard--polka music like you've never heard it
Wisconsin:
- james Magnuson--a quiet Christmas father-daughter reunion goes bad
Canada:
- John Farrow--murder and contraband runs over the St.
Lawrence;
- Lori Lansens--an Underground Railroad stop in Ontario;
- Howard Norman--Newfoundland, coffee addiction, and a dead lighthouse keeper;
- Carol Shields--a life story of either gender with a northern backdrop;
- Jane Urquhardt--from Ireland to Canada, both real and other-worldly